DIY IDEAS: MY Valentine's Surprise

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY EVERYONE!  


I hope everyone is having a good Valentine's today with your love ones :)

I thought I'd share my Valentine's gift with you guys with a quick step by step on how to achieve this kind of gift idea. This year, for Valentine's Day I decided to make an accordion book/picture frame for my boyfriend.

So a little on to how this idea started in the first place. Okay, my boyfriend's room is bare ... I mean EMPTY! I just recently was talking to one of my good friends about this and they said that that is actually pretty normal for many guys. Rooms BECOME decorated when there's a lady in the house LOL. Anyways his room just has the necessitates: Bed, desk, closet, and two dressers. Anyways, his desk is really empty there's really nothing there except for his computer. That's when I thought to myself ... "Hey! why don't I make him something to decorate his very naked room?!" and that's where the accordion photo book/frame came from!

I also wanted to make something special and on a budget for him because February 12th was our one year anniversary (the very first day we started talking) :)

SO let's get started!

Here's what you will need:

Cardboard
Cardstock Paper (anycolor)
Pictures (I used 5X5)
Glue (I used a gluestick)
Colored Construction paper (Optional)  
Scissors
Pencil
Eraser
Permanent Marker


Step #1 Get your Photos READY! 

Order photos that I wanted to put into the album. I wanted them to be square shaped and a little bit bigger so I ordered 5X5. (I printed out 13 photos)

Step #2  The accordion/bookpages of your album

Get the cardstock paper and measure it to the size you want each page to be.
Make sure you measure the cardstock to fit two pages on the paper, that way you can fold it and it will be easier BUT cut it to the size that you like.
(Mines are sorta a rectangle shape because I wanted room on the bottom to write something for each photo ... sorta like a bigger version of a polaroid!)

* A great tip is to cut out a stencil piece to help you measure it on the cardstock paper before you start cutting on your "good paper" it will save you time and help get you all the same size pages :)

Step #3 "Greeting Card Shape"

Cut the cardstock pages out. As you cut them the paper should be a rectangular shape since you will be folding it in half to create two pages (like a book!) After you cut all your pages out fold them all in half and they should look like little "greeting cards"

Step #4 THE ART OF ZIGZAG

Now to make the accordion look you are going to take two of these pieces and places them in a zigzag way.

Here's an illustration:

Take the second piece and flip it so its "upside-down"

Take P#1 SIDE B and glue it to "Upside-Down" P#2 Side A to create a zigzag accordion look.

Do this until you have enough pages for your pictures.

(I made 10 pages for 10 photos)

GLUE on your pictures!

STEP #5 COVER FRONT and BACK 

Now take the cardboard paper and cut it out to be a little bit bigger than your accordion pages since it will play as the front and back cover of your photo album.

*For cardboard, you can cut some out from an old box you aren't using anymore OR a unused gift box from Christmas :)

STEP #6 TO make the FRONT and BACK PRETTY

Take pretty construction paper. I used a construction paper that you use for scrapbooking and measuring it out to be a little bit bigger than your cardboard pieces. Place the side that you WANT not showing facing you. Take one cardboard piece and put on the construction paper. Fold all four corners of the construction paper. Then CUT the corners off of the constructions paper.

 


Fold the FLAPS of the construction paper onto the cardboard paper and GLUE. DO the same for second cardboard piece.

    

STEP 7: Putting it all together 

Take the ends of the accordion book pages and GLUE the ends to the front and back cover




STEP 8: ALMOST DONE! 

DECORATE the front and back cover

Put little captions for each photo

STEP 9: FINISH !! 

Now wrap GIFT!

TA DAH! 

SO that is my attempt of showing you a step to step DIY accordion PhotoAlbum :) Hopefully you enjoyed it! 

And I know Valentine's Day is coming to an end but hey! I just wanted to share with you so maybe you can use this idea for other special event/holidays during the year :) Its great for birthdays...Christmas...Anniversary... Be creative! :D

Until next  time! Thanks for visiting!!